Who can forget the immortal line from Oliver Twist when a young blogger named Oliver asks Matt Cutts of Google for more blog traffic. (I’m assuming that’s what was happening. I’ve never actually read the book.)

Young Oliver’s plight is one felt by most bloggers. Whether we have a little bit or a lot, we all want more traffic.

Last week, I conducted an experiment here at Be A Better Blogger. In an effort to prove there is no “one right way” to succeed as a blogger, I ditched my customary blogging schedule. Instead of writing one long post as I do every week, I wrote 5 “short” posts:

I should note it was my goal to keep the posts between 500 and 750 words each. However, only one of the five met this goal. Two of the posts exceeded 1,000 words. In other words, my rambling ways got the better of me.

Still, the results of the experiment were surprising. There was a considerable difference in my weekly comments, social media shares, and — yes — traffic.

Sit back, relax, and prepare yourself for a Be a Better Blogger first: It’s time for a blog traffic case study.

First, the stats…

Social Shares: 84% increase over previous 3-week average

When compared to the three previous weeks where I only published one post each week, the week of five posts easily came out ahead on social media shares.

For the week, the five posts received a total of 255 shares between Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

However, taken individually, none of the five posts matched the social shares received for one of my typical, once-a-week posts. The closest was “The reformed procrastinator’s guide to repurposing blog content,” which had 32 Tweets, 8 Facebook shares, and 36 Google Plus shares.

Comments: 119% increase over previous 3-week average

As I expected would happen, the total comments for the five posts bested the comments I typically receive in a single, weekly post.

For the week, the posts received 65 total comments (excluding my own). Compare this to my previous “one post a week” totals of 33, 29, and 30 comments (again, excluding my own).

Of course, while the total engagement for the week was higher, on an individual-post basis the comments were much lower.

Of the five posts, “The reformed procrastinator’s guide to repurposing blog content” led the pack with 20 comments, but “Know your audience” and “What a 4-hour meeting can teach us about blogging” had a measly 8 comments each.

Bounce Rate: Did not jump

To my surprise, not only did the bounce rate for the week of 5 posts not go up, it actually went down.

The week of 5 posts in 5 days had a bounce rate 0.98% lower than the previous 3-week average. Also, its average session duration increased by 12 seconds.

It should be noted these numbers keep in line with the current trends of Be A Better Blogger. With each passing week, its bounce rate is going down and its average session duration is going up. These trends can be attributed to its age (the blog is now 4-months old) and the increase in quality readers as more time goes by.

All this to say, the modest improvement is not surprising. What is surprising is the fact the positive trends continued despite the fact I had less time to devote to each post.

Traffic: 46% increase over previous 3-week average

And then we get to traffic.

When compared to the previous three weeks where I published one post per week, the week of “5 posts in 5 days” saw an increase of 46% in traffic.

In those three weeks, traffic was slow Sunday through Wednesday. Once the posts were published, traffic spiked on Thursdays, remained high on Fridays, and began to dip on Saturdays.

Day-to-day traffic during the week of 5 posts was a bit different:

In the week of 5 posts in 5 days, traffic was higher than usual Monday through Wednesday. It began to dip on Friday, and the dip continued on Saturday. It’s merely speculation on my part, but I imagine reader fatigue played a role in Friday’s dip.

So, it’s settled, right? Publishing more frequently is clearly the way to go. Right?

Not so fast…

The anecdotal evidence

“Statistics are nice, but what are your thoughts on the experiment, Kevin?”

I’m glad you asked.

Despite the increase in traffic, comments, and social media shares, the experiment left me feeling cold. Here are the reasons why:

As you can imagine, I was exhausted that week. I essentially wrote 5 week’s worth of words in a single week.

But you know what?

Last week’s five posts in five days was equally exhausting.

All totaled, I wrote 4,630 words in those 5 posts. When you consider I usually write a single post of 1,500 to 2,500 words each week, this is the equivalent of packing 2-to-3 weeks of writing into a single week.

And then you have blog comments. I try to respond to all comments my wonderful readers leave me. Sometimes I get behind, but eventually I catch up. Well, when you receive 65 comments in a week as opposed to 33, 29, or 30; you have to devote twice as much time to commenting.

This might not be a big deal if your replies are of the “Thanks for commenting” variety, but if you try to write in-depth responses the difference is noticeable.

2. Social proof takes a hit

When someone visits your site for the first time, they typically look at your latest post. If it has a lot of comments and a lot of social media shares, they think: “Wow, this guy or girl must know their stuff.”

That’s social proof at work. If someone sees a lot of comments, they are more likely to comment. If they see a lot of social media shares, they are more likely to share it.

A downside to publishing frequently is your “latest” post is never the latest for very long. As such, its comment count isn’t going to be as high. Its social shares count won’t be as impressive. In short, its social proof is going to be lacking.

The weekly posts I write, when you count my own responses, will have comment counts in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. To a new user, this is impressive.

At various times last week, my “latest” post would have a small handful of comments. Or, worse, zero comments for long stretches of time. A user visiting me for the first time would look at these numbers and assume I have no readership. Such a user would be less likely to comment on their own, share my post, or subscribe to my mailing list.

Perception means a lot.

3. No time to promote

Yes, I already covered how exhausting frequent publishing can be. This is related, but different.

When you write once a week, your posts have an entire week of your undivided attention. When you publish daily, they get one day. Tops.

After I wrote “Be Memorable,” I spent the next week promoting it. I shared it on Facebook and Google Plus. On Twitter, I shared it numerous times. When I left a comment on a CommentLuv-enabled blog, a link to “Be Memorable” was left for others to see. When I sent out my weekly newsletter, my subscribers had only one link to click in the email: the link to “Be Memorable.”

In short, the post got a week’s worth of love.

The 5 posts in 5 days didn’t feel quite as enamored. They received less promotion, less comments linking to them, and they had to compete with one another for clicks in my weekly newsletter.

Lessons learned

Here are a few things I learned last week:

If traffic is your primary goal, frequent publishing can be effective if you already have a steady base of readers. However, if your blog currently lacks readership, you’re unlikely to see a bump in traffic. Your time would be far better served promoting.

Diminished time and social proof are the two biggest short-term shortcomings of frequent publishing. Long term, the inability to do in-depth promotion is likely the biggest shortcoming of frequent publishing.

If you have a multi-author blog, frequent publishing could make a lot of sense. Social proof would still be an issue, but the burdens of time and promotion would be lessened since there would be multiple bloggers to shoulder them.

There really is no “one right way” to blog. Frequent publishing has many cons, but it has pros, too.

Would I ever do something like this again? I have a hard time imagining a scenario where I would want to write daily. Could two posts a week work? Possibly. But right now, one in-depth post a week fits my schedule.

Infrequent publishing allows me to promote, read and comment on other blogs, continue tweaking my blog design, and write guest posts for others. It allows me to spend my evenings with my lovely wife, rather than with yet another blog post publishing the next day.

In short, it allows me to balance all the things in my life which need my attention.

Plus, infrequent publishing doesn’t zap all of my joy. So it has that going for it. Which is nice.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Yes, I had been carefully reading your posts in-between, waiting for the outcome – this one, which says it all. It certainly isn’t easy and I am glad you saw the results yourself and shared them with us. I agree, if you want traffic and hardly any engagement or comments, daily posts work well.

This of course if you are the single person writing as you hardly get time to make return visits, nor can you visit blogs you want to because of time restraints, and I don’t blame such bloggers either because they are forever writing!! If you have a multi-author blog, then daily posts are no issues, and some even put up posts 2-3 times a day!!

Promotion, as you rightly mentioned, also takes a back seat – again, due to lack of time. All of this doesn’t really take you anywhere, or perhaps you gain rank and traffic, but where is your peace of mind, happiness, and life??? I would never want any of these if I cannot be happy at the end of the day.

It makes sense to strike the right balance, and perhaps posting once or twice a week takes care of everything. It gives you the freedom to make your return visits to other blogs, promote your posts, engage with other bloggers, build relationships, guest posts, work on other things, and live a life you want with ease. After all, if there is no joy in blogging, is it all really worth it?

Speaking of myself, as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I used to post once a week on both my blogs, earlier. But then I started posting twice a week on this present blog, and it’s been working well. Yes, sometimes things happen and I might get delayed by a day, or at times some family issues come up and the comments take a back seat, but you can always catch up things over the weekend, if at all.

Thanks for sharing this with us, and I am sure it’s going to help many bloggers make the right decision for themselves. Have a nice week, whatever is left of it 🙂

I’m glad you kept reading my posts last week. The outcome was both surprising and unsurprising, if that makes sense.

I figured my totals for comments, social shares, and traffic for the week would be higher. And I figured the stats would be lacking on an individual-post basis. What I didn’t count on was how difficult and time consuming it would be to write five unique posts in five days.

I think I could easily overlook the social proof slippage which happens by posting daily. But the lack of time, not to mention the lowly amount of promotion I’m able to do, was just hard to overlook! I’m still tired from last week. Haha.

It’s interesting to me you, Adrienne and Carol all post twice a week. I think I could make that work, and I may try it in the future. Just not right now. I need a break! I’ve got about 100 blogs I need to read and catch up on (yours included, Harleena!) 🙂

Thank you for stopping by and leaving me your comment, Harleena. I appreciate it. Hope you are having a great week!

What an awesome blog post and case study – you did a top notch job on this, and loved the graphs and visuals! Wow – really think you did a great job on giving valuable info here.

I’ve been publishing two blog posts per week for a while but have recently had several big interruptions to this schedule, and I’ve seen a little dip in traffic. So, it is true, newer content brings the traffic, but that is not my only goal.

My schedule used to be daily – a long time ago when I was taught that’s the way to get the search engines to crawl your site, and I continued that for quite some time. I agree with you, it IS exhausting.

A few years ago I learned the importance of content syndication and decided to spend at LEAST the same amount of time I do syndicating my content as I do creating it and editing it, which is a lot. Now I have a check list and systems for this, which my VA helps with, but I do also take a big part.

I actually need to do more. I want to do more slide shares and video submissions, etc.

Yep, ya gotta have a balanced life or what’s the point, right? Killing yourself is not the way to do it. I couldn’t agree more! 🙂 There is no “one right way” to blog, I agree wholeheartedly with that!

Thanks so much for doing such a thorough analysis of the different options so the rest of us can benefit from what you learned! I wanted to jump in here after Carol’s comment because I’m interested in knowing more about her syndication efforts. It’s something I haven’t really explored much yet and to be honest, I don’t really get how it works!

Personally, you probably already know I write for three different blogs at the moment, and two of them I update twice a week and one, just once. Needless to say, I’m spread pretty thin. I don’t promote as much as I could/should. But I’m okay with slow growth. I’m still figuring things out.

I knew you had (at least) 3 different blogs, so I can just imagine how busy you are all the time! I like what you’ve done with IBA and Mommy Blogger Academy. One day down the road I’ll launch a sister site for Be A Better Blogger, but right now that’s far, far off into the future. I already have my hands full! 🙂

You’re welcome, Brittany. Thanks for commenting! I hope you have a great weekend.

I’m a big proponent of having one authority site. Yeah, I do have a small niche site but it doesn’t take much at all and I only update it occasionally.

I’ll be doing a blog post on content syndication very soon, but basically the first thing I do is post to all my social media networks, blogging communities and email my list. That right there is gold.

But I take it farther by putting setting up annotations in Google Analytics to see what caused my traffic spikes. I add an annotation when I publish new content, when I send an email, when a famous person tweets my stuff, etc.

Also, using Google URL Builder for custom links to know exactly where traffic is coming from is very helpful in knowing what to keep doing to promote and what to improve, etc.

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it. It certainly was nice to tie a bow on last week’s tiring experiment. This post was cathartic in a lot of ways!

Back in the day, how long were you doing the “blogging daily” thing? I remember when that was the go-to advice offered by experienced bloggers. I would occasionally write 3 times a week, but never 5. Not until last week!

I’m a fan of SlideShare and want to use it more frequently, too. It would appear my latest (published Wednesday) will be the first not to be featured on the homepage. Still, it’s close to 1,000 views already, which isn’t too shabby at all.

Amen to balance. I’m still working on finding mine, but I’m getting better. Now I know “publish daily” is bad for my work-life balance. 🙂

I thought you were very brave taking this on. I was exhausted just knowing you were writing every single day and can you imagine me trying to find the time to visit your blog every single day! I hate missing your posts, any post.

When I started blogging I wrote three times a week and I’ve never participated in any 30 day blogging challenge. I get that people do it because they’re told it will increase their traffic. I get that, I truly do but you said it best here. Your traffic may increase but I’d love to see your bounce rate and your engagement on every single post because there is no way you can fully promote every single one of them and get your desired results.

In the summer of 2011 I backed down to posting twice a week because I just had so much on my plate it was hard for me to keep up. And by the way, I had two blogs in two different niches at that time and I was writing and commenting for both. They both did really well but as you said, it was exhausting.

I think that each individual has to sit down and decide what it is that they want. People want traffic but it has to be your target audience or it’s not going to do you any good at all. When you’re new I think it’s a disservice to tell them they need to blog everyday because that will instantly put a bad taste in their mouths because it’s so tiring. They need to give themselves the time to fully promote each blog post.

I appreciate you sharing your results with us and although you did see some spikes in a lot of areas it wasn’t worth the time you had to take to do it all. Bravo though Kevin for this experiment and we can all learn from this.

You know, you bring up a point I forgot to mention… a point I didn’t know would happen going into the experiment: When you blog daily, readers who would like to read, comment and/or share all your posts might not have time to do so. As bloggers, it’s easy to forget your readers are busy, too!

I should have included my bounce rates in the study (I might go back and add it). Surprisingly, my bounce rate went down 0.98% the week of 5 posts compared to the previous 3-week average. The average session duration went up 12 seconds.

Of course, these changes are so minor I’m chalking them up to the fact my blog is trending in the upward direction (as opposed to crediting the frequent posting schedule). My bounce rate is lower this week than last, lower this month than the month before, etc.

So you used to have two blogs in two different niches? If you commented and write then the way you do now, bit you WERE exhausted. 🙂

You’re right about new bloggers and the negative effect “write daily” can have on them. It’s so tiring, so draining… all it will lead to is disillusionment with blogging, and that’s no good!

Glad you enjoyed the post (and the experiment), Adrienne. And you better believe I’ll be relaxing this weekend! Haha.

I totally agree with the 1 post per week and have some time for promoting it… At least this schedule it is working for me… I was able to write in depth post and got valuable social proof.

Another benefit of this schedule is, I have time to do my research and study for next few blog posts… I am able to create drafts for next 2-3 posts every week, so it is helping me to plan my articles properly as I know what I am supposed to do NEXT…

This schedule is helping me to live my blogging life according to my believe:

New to your blog here, and I defiantly agree. I’ve been testing the waters myself and have to agree.

I have accommodated to writing daily posts, but recent have been taking up 2-3 posts per day along with trying different methods of promotions. There is literally no time for promotion! While I do not get a lot of comments, this does not steer away from the fact of the content, social media postings, etc. The posts drain your time and are hard to contentiously push forward and self-promote.

There you go! You finished it Kevin. And you almost got to 500 words! 😀

*warning, not a comment like the pros above LOL!*

Back in the day, I wrote like that for an old blog I ran, if that wasnt exhausting enough, I started other niche blogs and wrote on those 3x a week each! I was an excited/enthusiastic little critter back then…

I hated blogging some few months after that lol. Because of that dumb experience of mine, I have outsourced/hired in-house writers ever since.

That was 5 years ago. Recently I have started to get the urge to write again so I have started following you and other great bloggers. I guess I…sorta missed it. So once I settle my schedule with my projects, I hope to get back to blogging regularly/consistently again.

It’s such a fine line determining how often you should post, there are certainly positives and negatives for both approaches.

I post on blogging tips 101 3 times a week. I used to post twice, but I found that increasing it to three times definitely helped that traffic. As it’s a new blog, I wanted to focus on traffic.

HOWEVER, I also have another blog Smart Party Planning, which I also post 3 times a week. So technically I am now posting 6 times a week….eek! I have noticed that since BT101 started, my traffic in SPP has dipped and your case study clearly shows one of the reasons why.

It is hard knowing what to do and I am still trying to work out a schedule that will work for both blogs.

The only time I have ever done a post everyday was a couple of years ago on SPP where I did a “14 days of Valentines”. I did this as I thought it would generate a lot more traffic. The result was that it did, but it was SO hard to keep up the pace and come Valentines day I was exhausted! I also had a 5month old at the time, so life was hectic and I have never done it since. So clearly it wasn’t as productive as I had initially hoped it would be!

You have probably raised more questions for me now than answered them tho….lol. I think I need to go back and think over my strategy!

Kevin, a great case study. Thanks for sharing with us. I did that once too. I wrote 3-5 posts per week and then settled down to 2. And lately 1 but 2-3 is best I found. The more you published the less comments you got on each post and the less time you had to comment on other blogs. The sharing on social also took a hit as you are constantly trying to share the new posts and follow the 80/20 rule along the way. I felt more like the hamster behind the wheel than ever before when I tried posting that often. It’s a delicate balance indeed because if you don’t have joy in doing it you will do it less or quit altogether.
Have a great weekend ahead Kevin!

Thank you for both the statistics and the insights from this experiment.
As a reader, I also find “daily posts” exhausting – both my time and attention are limited, and if the blog-topic isn’t at the top of my ‘must read’ list, I’m liable to not even read most of them! Which really highlights the importance of informative *and* catchy headlines, doesn’t it?

Welcome back! I don’t believe I’ve quite caught up to all the comments left to me during the week of 5 posts, so this is my first time responding to you. Thanks for visiting my blog! I’m glad to have you as a reader. 🙂

I’m glad you enjoyed the stats and insights! Your point is similar to the one Adrienne made earlier: Daily publishing isn’t just exhausting for the writer, it’s exhausting for the readers, too. Readers only have so much time in a week. If you publish too frequently, posts they would have gladly read, commented, and shared with their friends will go unread, uncommented, and unshared because they won’t have time.

And yes, all the more reason for informative and catchy headlines, for sure. 🙂

Thanks again for stopping by, Karen J. Hope your week is off to a great start.

Congrats on your week long case study. I need to do a case study of my own actually. I’ll seriously consider that – but not on the experiment you tried.

You said somethings that were really interesting:

1. You no longer have as much time to promote. When you do post everyday, your promotion time is less and less an each post is fighting for attention.

2. Your social proof takes a hit. You’re so right on this. If you don’t have the readership, thee first thing a person sees when they visit your site, is the little bit of engagement that’s there. That’s not good.

3. It really is exhausting. I don’t know HOW some people do it but good luck to them.

Really interesting results you got. The traffic spike is good but then if your goal is strictly to get traffic then it works. That’s not my goal at all.

First of all I would like to congratulate you for the bump in your traffic. From 46% to 72% woah ! I must say that it is something.
However, in our blog, gossipmania.in we (Swapnadip, Sarmista and I) tend to publish materials every single week as many other bloggers.

When we first started blogging, we used to post article every alternate day and because we didn’t know about all the promotion and back linking stuffs, our initial readers base was very low.
But once we changed the strategy and instead of publishing every alternate day, we decided to post them every week and opted promotional strategies.
It really worked well I have to say. Because as you have mentioned already that by posting articles once in 5 days would receive our undivided attention. It is true and I have seen that too.

But Kevin I am not getting your point here. Surely when visitors see an article with loads of comments or shares, they too comment or share but posting regularly might be a tad be difficult for beginners. Obviously that’s what you have hinted stating a good readers base is necessary for that but there are certain important topics that need to be in the spotlight for atleast some time. Don’t you think.

I never have given this a second thought but after going through your post, I am having second thoughts. But as usual, your article was informative as ever and in the end they always give ‘food for thought’.

Thank You Kevin for sharing your experience with us. May God bless you in every aspect and hope you continue getting more traffic. Have an awesome day ahead my friend. Take care.

first of all, congratulations on completing your marathon week. Second of all, congratulations on publishing this post which is enjoyable, easy to read and has all the hallmarks of a RockStar Case Study.

So well done to you.

I know how you feel when you say it’s exhausting. I probably write every single day bar weekends where I take some much needed rest. Not all on my blog, but if I consider how many comments I leave, how much content I write for my other sites, then I’m probably looking easily at the 12,500 word a week mark.

And that is so exhausting that I will just drop everything, say on a Monday or Tuesday, and just take an extended break, get out in the fresh air, do something with friends or family etc.

I think we all need this break, and as much as we all enjoy writing and content creation, there comes a time where we must give ourselves a break – to freshen up if anything.

So an additional 5 blog posts a week for me would be both impossible and, if I’m truthful, quite unpleasant! But kudos to you for pulling it off.

Talking of social proof, you are spot on here. Obviously if you have 100k visitors every month, it shouldn’t make such a big difference, but for the likes of me, with around 3k visitors a month, it would be silly of me to post 5 times in a week. As you say, that one visitor may read your latest post, comment, share and leave.

So that would impact me big time.

And lastly, promotion. It took me a long time to realise the importance of a promotion strategy. It is important, in fact, it’s just as important as the content you publish, because without going out and shouting about it, you are not going to draw in new readers, reach new visitors etc.

So I can’t imagine how difficult this was for you.

On a side note, I would like to share my own habits when reading my favourite blogger’s blogs. I visit them once a week. It’s not something I do daily. If I visited all of my favourite blogs every day, then I wouldn’t be able to blog myself.

And I base my own habits directly to my own publishing strategy, and that is one new post every week.

Anyway, enough here, as I say, great post, I’m certainly glad you played the Guinea pig in this one!

Sharing this soon.

Have a great weekend.

(And yes, 400+ words in this comment, and I haven’t even had my breakfast yet!)

Hi Kevin,
Thanks for sharing the details from your experiment. Daily posting is not something that I really have any interest in (at least, not with my current blogs), so I can relate to your feelings. You brought up a lot of good points that sometimes get overlooked by placing all the emphasis on traffic numbers.

Thanks for this survey. As a new blogger, I find it helpful and encouraging. I aim to post about once a week but am not always making that goal at the moment, because of changing work schedules. As I get more into it, I plan to start writing more posts when I have freer time, so that I’ll have something to post in those busier periods when I don’t have time to write. I’d read somewhere else that daily posting was the best and that seems so unachievable right now. You make some good points here that encourage me to continue with my once a week goal. Thanks for the encouragement.

Glad you enjoyed the case study. Your idea to writing more posts once you have some free time (so you have something to post during busier periods) is a good one. I really need to do the same. I just have no time at the moment. 🙂

You definitely don’t have to publish daily. I’ve seen the “daily is best” advice, too. The advice has been around at least a decade. It works for some people, it doesn’t for others. Sadly, a lot of new bloggers are led down a path filled with disappointment when they’re told they “have to” do something. If you prefer to publish once a week (like I do), then publish once a week. 🙂

Indeed an effective case study and congratulation for bump your traffic. Content Social Sharing, commenting all are important to increase the traffic for a blog. Sometime I realize one content in a week is enough. But next week when I check the traffic rate of previous week it is decreased, sometime it is increased. I don’t why I get this different result. So this weekend I will make a new plan for my blog. It will be applicable from next week. Hope I will get better results. Thanks for sharing your case study.

I’m a new reader. I’m not sure how I ended up on your blog, but I love how entertaining it is! 🙂

I definitely would not be able to post every day. For me the ideal would be to just post when I have something good to write about, and not have a set schedule where I *have to* post every X days. I know that’s probably not a good strategy, but nothing makes me so unwilling to do something as when I’m forced to!

Regardless of how you got here, welcome! 🙂 I’m glad you found me, and I’m happy you find the blog to be entertaining.

On the contrary, I think your no set schedule where you “have to” publish every X days strategy is a smart one! Will some readers be confused because they don’t know when to expect your posts? Sure. But the trade off is all your writing will be good and inspired.

Hope you’re able to find your way to my site again sometime soon. Would love to have you as a regular reader. 🙂

I think this is one of the unique case studies where you do the case on yourself and adopted two different courses of actions to watch results and pros & cons of each. So there is no doubt of any kind of missing, guesstimates or error and omission.
From business point of view I just drew the conclusion after your post that what is the use of a lengthy line of customers at the entrance of your business place if you don’t have resources to serve all of them. It is just like you invite applications for conducting a course but don’t have teachers to offer guidance to registrants of the course.

But it will equally be injustice to stop the visitors just because you don’t have resources. If you offer value and that too frequently I mean more than once in a week then obviously search engines and people both would notice you more and visit you more.

So the way-out is to either invest your own time more to manage where you are missing like sharing at social media and replying comments with more care or outsource a few tasks to continue your new strategy of frequently publishing in a week without any mess.

Thanks a lot for sharing a very authenticated and well supported case study that may make several to revisit their strategy of publishing once in a week.

I’ve read your case-study post with great interest, indeed, and your conclusions are very helpful.

I can relate very well to the effort you put into publishing on a daily basis. In July, I took part in the Ultimate Blog Challenge, where I was supposed to write a post every single day. I did not complete the challenge as such, I managed to write 18 posts in July, so 60% of what I was supposed to for ‘successful’ completion. Sometimes I wrote daily, sometimes I had a couple of days off. I remember it being totally exhausting and I was relieved when the month ended – I was getting to the point of resenting having to write something, and when I first started blogging, it was supposed to be a fun thing to do, not a chore!

Was it worth it for me? I think it was – I had a whip cracking over me and forcing me to write, so I started accumulating content. I proved to myself that I was able to write. And most importantly, I built up a little bit of a readership base (quite an important thing for a new blogger) which I wouldn’t have done otherwise.

I can confirm your observations re. posting frequency vs. traffic. My site’s traffic in July was twice the size of that in June, and about 40% higher than in August. September is looking very quiet at the moment, mainly because I had to take a bit of a break from posting for various reasons. So your point about positive correlation between posting frequency and traffic stands.

Would I opt for daily posting in the future? I am considering it, but it would be only for a short time. I noticed that a lot of people who visited my blog while I was publishing daily, keep coming back, so I am thinking of doing this again to bump up the readership. Most likely, I will go on the Ultimate Blog Challenge again to do that, as it actively encourages commenting on other people’s blogs, but will not be obsessing about writing daily for a full month.

Your observation re. comments people leave on posts, is very valid and I’d rather have fewer posts with more comments than loads of posts with no comments – the latter would make me think I’m writing into a complete void, and that would be pointless. I know traffic stats can tell me the number of visitors, but it’s the comments people leave on the website that matter most to me – first of all they suggest that the post was read from beginning to end, secondly that it was interesting enough for people to want to spend a few minutes responding to it.

The traffic and page views are only a small part of the story, it’s the people wanting to comment who validate my reason for wanting to write. So, while I may be tempted to give my blog a boost by writing daily, or every second day, for a week or two, my longer-term goal will be increased reader engagement and I will try to follow your example in posting weekly – at least on average! 🙂

Thank you again for making yourself a guinea-pig for this experiment, much appreciated!

We’re always debating over at Spokal how frequently we should be posting, and thus far 2 1,600 – 2,000 blogs a week seems to be working for us – but this experiment sounds has really solidified that we’re on the right track as we tend to concentrate on promotion and distribution a lot too.

I also have a tendency to ramble, so I’m not sure how well I’d fair at keeping my word count low either!

Welcome to my blog! Glad you enjoyed the case study. Two posts per week seems like the magic number for my blogs I’ve seen. Judging by the feedback here in the comments, it’s certainly the most popular. 🙂

Keeping my word count low was the hardest part of the experiment, I think. Haha. Diminished sleep I can handle (that’s why God gave us coffee). But resisting all rambling was very difficult.

Thanks for stopping by, Sarah. Good luck to you and the rest of the Spokal team.

Haha. Yes, at least I got ONE under the 700 mark. I’m a rambler, what can I say? 🙂

Thanks! I’m glad you liked it. Appreciate the kind words. I did my best not to let the quality of my posts drop as I posted more frequently. I’m not sure I accomplished this goal, but I gave it my all!

Kevin, this is an awesome case study! You have been so brave to try this out. Writing everyday is good. In fact as a blogger, everyone must have it as a habit to write everyday. Anywhere from 30 mins to 1 hour is a good minimum to start with.

But it doesn’t mean we should be publishing everyday, because with blogging it is not just about publishing. Publishing a blog post is just the beginning. And there should be 20% of publishing and 80% of promotion (both the time and effort spent for the corresponding tasks). Otherwise all the time we put in creating that awesome content will go wasted.

In addition, there is no point in just looking at the screen and writing blog posts. It is kind of a locked down state. There is a world that needs to notice us, the bloggers. And they are not going to come to us and appreciate us for the effort we put in creating great content. We have to reach out to them and let them know that we exist with this awesome work!

I mean creating connections.

If we are going to spend all the time in writing blog post, how can we reach out to other bloggers? How can we learn what’s going on in the industry? How can we identify new bloggers to connect to? How can we grab extra opps like guest posts, interview requests and stuff?

That’s crazy, right?

While I DO respect content creation a lot and treat it as one of the most crucial tasks associated with blogging, one should not take it to a level where there is no time for other equally crucial tasks.

Besides, doing anything that could cause a burnout is a no-no in my book. The main reason I started my own online business is I want to be free – free from the limitations that some “boss” puts on me. Nobody tells me when I should work and when I should take vacation. And my work/business should allow me to spend time with my family as much as and when needed!

If I am going to burn out myself with just writing and publishing content everyday, I will be missing the whole point 🙂

Thanks for testing this out for all us bloggers, and publishing the result of your case study. And I so agree with your conclusion. One or two times a week works best for me.

But then I have 3 blogs – not just blogs, but 3 different businesses – and I publish one post per week on each of them; so its already 3 posts per week for me 🙂 But this schedule fits me nicely and gives me enough time for other tasks in my business as well as helps me spend time with my family!

You are right social media is amazing in its work and there will be a boost if you are using social networking websites to promote your blog post.

I have read many blog posts about updating your blog daily or not. It is dependent at the blog owner. But one thing is great if you have time to promote the blog post then you can write it daily because without promotion writing a blog post is of no use.

But even after getting success and boost up in your business you will get time to enjoy. Being workaholic is not that much good.

Thanks! The boost in traffic was nice. I just didn’t care for the exhaustion.

I suppose it is possible for some to write frequently and have time to adequately promote, but it’s just beyond me right now. I’m a one-man blogging team with a full-time job. There’s just not enough of me to go around!

Appreciate you stopping by and leaving me your comment. Hope you’re having a great week!

Looking at the quality, and depth, and number of comments, I think your point has been taken 😉

Story of my blogging life, dude. My old blog generated 16,000 page visits on some days because I posted to it more than once a day.

Of course, “page visits” do not make one happy, nor do they buy your eBook, nor do they endorse your blog.

Now, if you want to be happy, do what brings you joy. I feel joy by publishing 2,000 word posts 3 times weekly because I can promote posts effectively, because I can over deliver through each post, and ….most of all…..I am being true to my intent, by keep this sked.

My intent: taking everybody possible, with me. Meaning, I want to take you island hopping, teaching you how to become a pro blogger, or I want you to become more free, working from your home town, as a pro blogger.

My current posting strategy – depth, value, killing it (in a good way) with each post – helps me stay true to my intent, which makes me joyous, because I can fully express myself, and also, I am taking, like a gazillion more folks along for the Blogging from Paradise ride, compared to my old blog.

We live in a Universe of feelings, and when you do what brings you joy, you detach from outcomes, and pure magic happens.

It was very interesting to read about your experiment. I have been testing this myself as well, and I just can’t seem to decide what to do. I get a lot more traffic when I publish every day, like you wrote, but it’s exhausting and I don’t get time to promote. I’ve experienced everything you did, but still, I find it hard to decide. I write every day anyway, but my posts will certainly be better if I don’t publish every day, and I’m looking for better conversations, so I guess publishing 2-3 times a day might be a better thing to do for me.

Good to see you here again! So you’ve been doing similar tests? It’s not surprising you’ve had the same experience, but I am a little surprised you’re still undecided. For me, it was obvious… I was just too, too exhausted to consider doing it more. 🙂

If you currently publish daily, do try scaling back to 2-3 times a week like you suggested. See how it goes. You might find your traffic doesn’t decrease noticeably, and the other benefits (more time to promote, not as tired, etc) might more than make up for any traffic you do lose. Let me know how it goes, whichever you do!

Thanks again for stopping by, Jens-Petter. Hope your week has gotten off to a great start.

Hope you still remember me :). Little bit busy lately promoting the blog to get some traffic boost on it. You are so right about the case study. I have experienced it by myself. It is true that if we able to post 3 times daily we will gain more traffic but hey, we will exhausted to do that especially if we build personal blog (only 1 person in charge).

I opt to publish whenever I have something important to share now and put all the effort in blog promotion.

Of course I remember you! You hadn’t been away that long. Haha. 🙂 Did you have good luck with the blog promotion?

Glad you enjoyed the case study. Your strategy — publishing only when you have something worth sharing — is probably the wisest schedule of all. Even publishing once a week might be too much if you have nothing worthwhile to say one particular week, right?

Awesome case study here. This infromation is very useful for new bloggers who may think that mass writing content for thier blog is the way to go.

For a writer, writing one article a day is as you said very tiring and can cause you to burn out in a short period of time. Not to mention probably having to face some major writers block. I find it hard enough to stick to my scedule of two weekly posts with everything I have going on.

Blogging is about writing quality informative posts rather than quantity and as I mentioned in my last blog post, so many blogs fail because they are so focused on quantity that they fail to produce the quality content that readers are looking for.

Welcome to my blog! Good to see you here after your comment on Carol’s blog.

Glad you liked the case study! Hopefully it does help a lot of people.

Definitely agree regarding writer’s block. The thing which helped me is I knew (more or less) the 5 posts I was going to write as I entered the week. I can’t imagine how much more difficult the week would have been if I had to come up with ideas, too.

Focusing on quantity versus quality is definitely a big mistake, I agree. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jonathan. I appreciate you stopping by!

I had a great uptake in traffic when I switched to daily posting but found it to eventually become unsustainable in the long term. I saw a massive positive spike shooting upwards but found it exhausting in just the way that you described. It is actually quite hard stringing together numerous quality topics, one after another. Eventually you are tempted to end up shaving corners to meet your objectives and then what you produce becomes less valuable to the audience you are trying to serve.

I have always found the articles where I have gone more in depth have performed better than those that graze the surface. As part of the economizing for daily posts I entered into more of the surface grazing than getting into the details.

Now I’ve returned to a healthier pattern where I tend to post 2-3 posts a week within the monday-thursday window where my content seems to perform better. I’ve always found Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to be unpredictable.

I can see from what you’ve elaborated on, how having more time for your publicizing efforts pays dividends. Daily posting puts great pressure on your promotion efforts because you’ll be dancing from one flower to another and may overlook those works that you put a lot of effort into.

Thanks for detailing this experiment and glad to see you give it a try! I would recommend experimentation to any blogger to challenge the status quo every once in a while.

Publishing daily does generate more traffic but it can be exhausted especially if you’re the only one writing all the content. I think it really depends on what type of site you’re running and what goals you have. For example – if your main focus is to generate traffic, then it make sense to publish 1-2 posts each day. Otherwise, publishing 2 or 3 posts a week is more than enough.

Kevin, I think you just confirmed I’m not only the oddball, but insane as well.

I was blogging occasionally for years, until I realized there needed to be a change so more people would know about my fantasy books. I wanted to achieve my personal goal of making 100 sales a day from my website. None of my time was spent on promotion, just writing books–so my marketing guy said, we need to spend $10K a month to buy the resources to promote my site (so I could keep writing books).

After he hit me repeatedly on the back to make sure I was still breathing, we agreed I didn’t have such funds for promotion.

“Ah,” he smirked, “but you have the talent and skill to MAKE the resources.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I replied.
“I just need you to create 12-16 new articles a day for me to use.”

(insert choking sounds here)

He smiled again, “You maintain the daily blog on the website and I’ll be placing the other resources in key locations on the internet. Mainly various social networks, so we create exposure.”

Now you should understand Laurence makes a very nice living from huge corporate clients–who make millions from his solid strategies…this wasn’t crazy talk. It was also based on MY goal of 100 sales a day, from my website.

“How long would I have to do this?” I asked with a gulp.
“I’m hoping we’ll get some serious traction by the end of the first year…but we need to plan on 24 months.”

(repeat choking sound and add gasping for breath…)

“Just so you know, Jaime–I’ve had many high-end clients attempt to do this, but not one has lasted more than 7 days.”

UPDATE…I just passed the 7 month mark, all by my lonesome. One month I did all the articles in a single week (20+ hours/day writing) and spend several days in bed when it was completed.

Crazy? No doubts. Worth it? All I have is a gut feeling on that one and stats given to me that I don’t understand–so I’ll answer by saying I have yet to reGRET what I’ve done, if that makes sense?

SO–here’s some quirky/stupid things I’ve learned about myself during this process.

* I average 10,000+ words a day and that doesn’t always include writing my current book project. If my keyboard isn’t smoking, I’m not working properly. My day starts at 3am and I don’t blog on weekends–it must be done beforehand.

* There is little to no promotion of my posts by myself. A Tweet here and there, maybe a Facebook post. It feels like I’m beating my own chest and then my writing suffers. It’s a viscous emotional cycle for me, so I stay away from self-promotion when possible…and yet I get emails and even people talking to me at book signings about how they enjoyed this-or-that post. Go figure.

* I don’t have a mailing list (well, it’s anorexic at best, anyway)…and no matter what I have done to create one (tools, tips, plugins, promotions, gifts, teasers…done them all) it hasn’t worked…so I gave up. There’s a sign up on the side bar of blog posts, but that’s the extent of my efforts at this point.

* I write daily because there’s always a feeling that someone out there needs to hear what I have to say. That feeling was confirmed on one of my JUST FOR TEENS articles. Days after it was posted and shared 90+ times on Facebook, I got an email, asking if I would be willing to talk. Someone dealing with abuse and being ostracized by his own family…and he didn’t know how to cope. Ended up talking to this young man (in his 20’s) for hours. Exceptional kid! Smart, kind, patient, forgiving…and just wanted to know if he was worth anything! Can you believe that? He walked away rejuvenated, empowered, happy and with a positive new perspective. That’s what I call a win-win.

* This isn’t about me. My wife, kids, friends and even my marketing guy say this is all about my WHY, my passion…which is about other people. So as I write, I tend to find new friends, like you Kevin, and have this desire to increase the value of what OTHER people are doing. I do this by telling my readers (whomever they are) what wonderful new finds I’ve discovered in the process of my own life. Then I have all my epic fantasy books and games, parenting books, yadda-yadda-yadda…where I weave my beliefs into stories that people seem to like. That’s cool too.

* The bold truth is–I don’t know where this is going, but I’m pretty sure after almost 10 years of doing this, I’m not the one in control of all the dice. Heck, I can’t always find all my marbles. So I’ve given myself up to the process and strive to love every minute of it.

I’m still learning from and appreciate your posts Kevin. If you don’t mind, I’m going to stand in the corner and become a permanent fixture on this blog. Maybe a lamp.

I know I’m as big as a couch, but I like lamps. Lamps give light.
Yeah…I’ll go be a lamp.

Finally I can be here and I am glad to be here. 🙂
This is a great article. You know, I often read several bloggers who are also doing the same thing with you. However, they get different results. It was interesting.

For me, I prefer to post one a week. However, for some reason, sometimes I post one post in two weeks. Well, English is not my native language, so make one post can take longer for me. That’s my problem in posting one post on my blog.

Thank you for sharing your case study. Really helpful for me.
Keep up the hard work and hope to see you around. 🙂

You rightly said that the total number of shares and likes would be less if we blog too frequent. But I thing for any new blogger its important to reach to his/her audience, and what will help here is number of posts. When you keep on posting regularly the people/ readers will turn up each day to see what you have posted and inturn boost your traffic. Also the more number of posts means the more chances of getting recognized. If any of your posts goes viral it will give you a lot of traffic.

I think for a new blogger the number of posts matters but a veteran blogger can post 1-2 times a week.

I think what you discussed here are all true. Being committed in your blog and publishing 3 or more posts a week is a little bit exhausting. That’s what I currently do in my blog. I love reading your points and view that we should only stick on what schedule we are comfortable with. In my case, I used to publish one post a week but I decided to publish more than that because I need to see for myself what would be the result.

And just like what you found out, there are some increased in traffic as well as in my earnings. I hope you’ll continuously give us great and interesting content. Keep up the good work! 🙂

Thank you so much for sharing your experiment. It’s very reassuring to read your findings… At times I have pushed myself to try and publish 3+ times per week and have felt quite ambivalent about the results.

It’s true – it takes a huge amount of effort to get more than 3 quality posts out per week, and it’s disappointing when you see that its not engaging people at an exponentially higher rate. Because it’s definitely an exponentially higher effort level.

One thing that I wonder when I post most frequently is whether the readership gets a bit blase or turned off. I have a sneaky feeling that there’s only so many times a reader wants to see yet another notification from your blog in their inbox. That high-frequency posting changes the way your readership views you and enjoys what you have to say. Instead of being a weekly ‘treat’ your readers look forward to – you become a bit of a chore… akin to dreaded homework!

That’s how I feel about the blog’s (even great blogs) that I’m subscribed too, that ask too much of me. All of a sudden, instead of looking forward to the next great post they send out, I begin to feel an aversion to the too-frequent demands for attention that the blog is making.

As a reader or subscriber, I definitely value, and look out for, the blog’s that send me one awesome post a week, or less. I look forward to receiving the post, and will read it, think about it and comment on it. It may just be me and my nature, but the blog’s that post more frequently start getting their notification emails deleted, without even being opened. They asked to much of me, and are no longer special – they are a turn-off.

I would far rather read one great post per week than 3 equally great posts… I don’t have time, I get bored, and it doesn’t feel good. Great blog posts are a bit like treats … they make you happy and feel great when you get them occasionally. When you get them everyday they lose their appeal…

I agree with you 100% having few valuable posts then spend the time effectively to promote your blog before writing another posts is the best way to go, after establishing a steady stream of traffic then you can write more content and promote your new content

Kevin, that was really awesome case study about getting traffic and blogging strategies.

Honestly, I used to did the mistake by just writing daily blog post. However, I feel like I am exhausted with blogging as well. I have not time for marketing my blog post, and promote it to social media.

You know..? Now I write 2 a week, but it is not for my blog. I write it for guest post, but I just published a month for my blog.

I think that it is okay for 2 a week writing. I just spend 2 days for writing blog post, and 3 days for blog commenting, and as well as social media sharing.

I really needed information like this. Myself i have been thinking of which blogging approach to use. I have a 3 months old blog and i haven’t been following any blogging pattern like say blog once a week or anything. Sometimes i’m extremely lazy that i’d go weeks without posting anything.

I wanted to try the blogging daily thing and see if i’d get any benefits out of that, but i think i agree with you that its very exhausting.

Just want to know one thing though, how long was it until you started getting comments and people sharing your posts?.